Campaign of the Month:
April 2011

Planejammer: The Spelljoined

The Greenhouse Portal

In the old empire of Mulhorand, there is some disagreement between clerics as to which god presides over the harvest. While agriculture is firmly the domain of Isis, some believe that Osiris watches over the harvest. Debate will no doubt continue for some time on this issue, but in reality the people who seek a good harvest pray to Isis for a blessing. The idea of associating a time of plenty and growth with the god of the dead seems alien to most Mulhorandi, but some few point out that the plants are being killed to provide the harvest and thus they fall into the purview of Osiris at that time. Some think that the church of Osiris makes the push to associate the harvest with their god, since they believe that Osiris has lost some of his popularity to his wife Isis. The followers of Isis have rebuttals to every argument advanced by the priests of Osiris, and it is this kind of religious debate that keeps the lives of average Mulhorandi citizens in a state of some turmoil. After all, no one wants to find out that suddenly they are praying to the wrong deity.

In addition to the common people of Mulhorand paying tribute to Isis for the harvest more often than Osiris, the priests of Isis contribute on a practical level to good harvests much more than the priests of Osiris, who often forget that they claim the harvest for him when planning and performing their death rituals. One of the ways that the priests of Isis aid the farmers of Mulhorand is through the development of new plants that grow well in the somewhat arid landscape of their nation. The Mulhorandi have long used technology and “science” in place of magic, or with magic, to accomplish their ends. Their great agricultural pumps are but one example, and the church of Thoth is making great strides to reintroduce a technological way of thinking to the people.

In the city of Gheldaneth, the priests of Isis and some powerful wizards cooperated on creating a demiplane on the Ethereal Plane for the purpose of studying and breeding plants. They did this for a variety of reasons, and one of them, but by no means the most important one, was to further consolidate their position in the harvest debate they had with the followers of Osiris. This demiplane, called the Greenhouse, is really a set of “islands” in the Ethereal connected by portals to the central land mass. Thus, each is separate, and the weather of each can be changed without affecting the other islands. This allows the priests to import plants from elsewhere and breed strains that can live in the Mulhorandi environment. A portal called the Greenhouse Gateway was created from the church of Isis to the demiplane. All this was done without the knowledge of the other deities (or their churches), and when the churches found out they were not pleased. However, Thoth’s clerics sided with those of Isis, as did the clerics of Osiris (who realized the benefit such a place could bring to their people). In the end, the Greenhouse was allowed to remain so long as the work done there was reported fully to the church of Horus and the Pharaoh.

The Greenhouse demiplane is used for a great many agricultural (and magic) products. The priests study plant blights, try to develop new strains of crop plants, and grow a few plant creatures. The wizards who helped form the demiplane also have access to it and use some of the islands to conduct magical research without rivals prying into their secrets.